Obesity Costs U.S. Companies Billions In Lost Productivity: Gallup

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Posted on 01/03/2013

The consequences of the country’s obesity epidemic expand beyond just personal health.

Overweight or obese full-time workers with other chronic health conditions miss 450 million more days of work each year than would healthy workers, costing businesses $153 billion annually in lost productivity, according to a recent Gallup poll. More than 85 percent of workers are obese, overweight or have a chronic health condition the study found.

And the problem may only get worse, as the nation grapples with what has been described as a “dramatic increase” in the prevalence of obesity by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, about one-third of Americans were obese, the CDC found, and in every state at least 20 percent of the population was obese.